I return to the hideout entangled in my own guilt. Jolie greets me at the border between grass and steel. High above, birds chirp in a silvery vale of far-reflected moonlight. Leaves rustle in a hot breeze. Low air pressure builds deep within my ears; a portent of the storm that already sweeps over the capital’s outermost limits. Miles over my head, stars wink out one by one as dark clouds consume them. I tilt my head back to watch the silent invasion, hair rippling unbound around my shoulders.
Tonight, the weight on those shoulders feels heavier than ever before.
My sister meets me not with the malice I expected, but a protective instinct that lingers behind her glasses. Her buttoned shirt is rumpled and in desperate need of an ironing she would normally have given it days ago. Coffee stains her lips a rusty red.
“What did you find?” she asks. Quietly, so as not to disturb the children that sit around junkheap campfires on the grassy green behind her.
I deliberate on how much to tell her, how much to admit about the bargain I made. The piece of my heart that feels lesser for having done it. I have what we need. But I don’t even know how much it cost.
“Our lead,” I eventually reply, not quite meeting her gaze. I slowly remove my JOY from my pocket and drop it into her already-open hand. Jolie knows every passcode. Wrote them herself, since she’s been taking care of my accounts like her own for as long as we’ve been twins. Her fingers effortlessly brush aside the login screen that instinctively jumps to the fore, thinking her a different user.
A small projection blinks to life between us. Blue light illuminates her cheekbones from beneath. “What you did was incredibly stupid,” she murmurs, splitting her attention between me and the screen. “Someone’s going to take advantage of that someday.”
“Would that someone be you?”
“You know it, big guy.” Jolie’s eyes dart up to meet mine through the projection. “We had a talk about you not getting yourself killed. Remember that one? I do.”
I scratch at my neck in embarrassment, eminently aware of the two people watching us argue from deeper in the hideout. “Yeah. I remember.”
She blinks behind her glasses and looks back down. “Good. Just making sure.”
Ajax and Mori keep to a respectable distance. They already wear blackmarket skinsuits covered in thermal-foiling scales and wired with inline climate control to combat even the most hostile temperatures. New Innovator tech fills their ears with comms equipment and biometric scanners that I suspect feed their vitals directly into Jolie’s JOY.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“You’ve been busy,” I say.
Jolie slaps my JOY back into my palm. “We started prepping as soon as Ajax came back. I sent them shopping for combat gear.” She makes a zipper motion at her sternum. My mind automatically intuits the meaning. “Peaches has yours.”
“Is that what you’re calling her now?”
“Only around you.” Jolie grimaces like she just took a drink of toilet bowl cleaner. “She’s so sweet, I couldn’t call her anything less.”
Chiding my sister with a chuckle, I wave the other two over. Ajax follows behind Mori, a full head taller than her. Intermixed metals meld tight to the exposed skin of his neck and form a variety of sheaths down his legs. All it will take is a single mental impulse to transform them into any weapon in the Duelist armory. I’ve seen him do it in single-digit frames.
Mori chucks a deflated skinsuit in my direction, trusting me to catch it. “What’s the play, Showmaker?”
“Bold of you to assume there is one.”
“You’ve got that look in your eye,” she drawls, making a smarmy mockery of the grin I normally wear. “You know, the one where it looks like some gears are actually turning in there. You’re not usually much for thinking.”
“I’m pretty sure I don’t have tells that obvious.”
“You do,” all three of them reply in unison.
Jolie’s nose wrinkles when I strip down and start shrugging my way into the skinsuit. Smog from the Vents makes a greasy film on my skin and hair. I’m sure it smells like ripe garbage to someone who’s been breathing clean air recently. Camping in the undercity has its charm, but I can’t wait to get back home and take a real shower and slip into a real bed with real sheets. I shiver at the very thought of soap.
“We’re only going to get one shot at this,” I tell them, stretching my arms through the skintight sleeves. Mori blatantly ogles from behind Jolie until Ajax flicks her on the cheek, drawing a surprised hiss. “And we’re taking it tonight. Vex Shimano will be transporting Bishop out of the capital for good. Once he’s gone, we’ll have no shot at reaching him. So we’re getting him back here and now.”
Mori’s eyes narrow dangerously. “And you learned this where, exactly?”
I glance to Jolie and only get a minute shake of her head in reply. “From someone who had no reason to lie to me.”
“I already confirmed the lead,” Jolie adds, business monotone.
“Uh huh.” Mori crosses her arms, heels spread, hips wide. Lips pursed in distrust.
“Will Prazen be with him?” Ajax asks.
I answer with a nod. Ajax’s fingers tighten around his blade.
Banishing our unease with a twirl of her revolver, Mori slides the gun into its holster, still matching my gaze. “And where’s this party going down?”
“EE-1,” I reply, bouncing on my heels. “The Electric Town Expressway.”
There’s a collective intake of surprise and excitement. I meet it with a smirk as new rain splatters against my shoulders, plummeting from stormheads that crackle a mile over the capital.
“Who’s ready to race a bullet train?”